Touched by His Noodly Appendage, a parody of Michelangelo’s The Creation of Adam, is an iconic image of the Flying Spaghetti Monster by Arne Niklas Jansson. (from here)Christmas 2015 has passed. The showy lights and the gift-giving have passed. The cleanup and post-holiday sales remain. What Christians can take away are memories of family time and thoughts about a God who so loved the world.

There is also that time us news junkies spent perusing the Internet and the local paper. One article I read included the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. I wondered. Is the Flying Spaghetti Monster real? Do people actually worship it? The answers to those questions are, surprisingly, yes and yes. The Flying Spaghetti Monster looks to all the world like a spoof. The primary website promoting the “One True Church of our Noodly Lord” obviously poses as a spoof (see here,here, and here) against Christianity. Yet it would be a mistake to assume the followers of the Noodly Lord are not serious.

Why serious? There is money involved. There is prestige. There is the power to make others think “correct thoughts.” There is the power to influence and control government. There is the worship of the state, and the state is quite real and concrete.

Whether inadvertent or not, the Flying Spaghetti Monster is a good symbol for an all-powerful state. The unblinking eyes. Tentacles that reach everywhere. Juicy meatballs that alternatively represent virility and the reward of true believers.

The followers of Islam worship a god they call Allah. Allah, I suppose, is a bit more traditional sort of god, a warrior’s god. No spoofing. Just worship Allah properly, and his clerics promise paradise and endless sex.

Some, such as those as those who run Wikipedia (here) equate Allah and Jehovah. Others (such as here and here) do not equate Allah with Jehovah.

Is Allah real? Do people worship Allah? Let it suffice to say that the dream of Allah — the wish for Allah’s blessing — is real. Because they wish to believe, people follow Allah with the same self-centered ferocity as those who worship the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

Both statists, the worshipers of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, and Muslims have much in common. Both seek salvation through their own works. Where they differ is that statists seek their reward in this life and Muslims seek their reward in the next. Islam, however, is a practical religion. Muslims, their leaders in particular, have been known to eagerly benefit from rewards in this life.

Both the statists and the Muslims need Jesus just as much as I do. These are the sort of people for whom Jesus gave us the Great Commission (Matthew 28:16-20).

From a political perspective, I find it difficult to choose between a statist and a Muslim who advocates Sharia. It is the choice between a rock and a hard place. Neither group respects the rights of Christians. Well, perhaps that’s not entirely true. The statist (essentially a Liberal Democrat in this country) thinks Christians have the right to a state funded abortion and/or contraceptives. The Muslim thinks Christians have the right to worship Allah.

Anyone who has studied nations dominated by Islam can figure out Islam is antithetical to God-given rights, but what about those who worship at the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster? What about those Liberal Democrats?

Consider how many Liberal Democrats equate what is moral with what it legal. Consider the Constitution itself. Which is more important to a Liberal Democrat, what the Constitution actually says or what judges says that it says?

What is the basic problem with a Liberal Democrat or a big spending Republican or a Muslim? Consider this verse.

6 For I am confident of this very thing, that He who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus.

The Christian sees virtue as coming from Jesus. If we have faith in Christ, He justifies us. Christians do not depend upon or even expect virtue to flow from the state. That is, Christians do not believe the state (or the Law (Romans 7:14-25)) can perfect mankind.

Yet both statists and Muslims expect some form of salvation from government or the Law, statists because they worship the power of government, Muslims because Islam ordains a theocracy.

Ironically, both the statists and Muslims prove through their actions the power of sin over man. With cowardly and treacherous glee, statists deride and torment those who recognize their right to make fools of themselves. With suicidal madness, Muslim radicals torture and crush the enemies of Allah. Because their egos demand preeminence, neither group leaves others in peace.

Recognizing and accepting the sinfulness of our nature, the people who founded this country sought a government designed to check our more vile impulses. Hence, James Madison advocated a constitutional republic (see THE ADVANTAGE OF A REPUBLIC OVER A DEMOCRACY). Even so, unless we are willing to see the need for a constitutional republic, we cannot make one work. So our budgets are out of control, much of our infrastructure is crumbling, our foreign policy is in a shambles,….. our government is tottering.

Therefore, if you do not believe you need Jesus, look carefully at what Islam has produced. Consider what those who worship at the altar of government are producing. Then take the time to read and study the Bible. Pray to understand why Jesus is the only cure for what ails the human heart.

14 “Do not let your heart be troubled; believe in God, believe also in Me.2 In My Father’s house are many dwelling places; if it were not so, I would have told you; for I go to prepare a place for you.3 If I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself, that where I am, there you may be also.4 And you know the way where I am going.”5 Thomas *said to Him, “Lord, we do not know where You are going, how do we know the way?”6 Jesus *said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me.

23 thoughts on “HOW A CHRISTIAN REGARDS THE CHURCH OF THE FLYING SPAGHETTI MONSTER AND ISLAM”

Well said, Tom. The pastafarians are good for a laugh sometimes. One woman fought for her right to wear a colander over her head for her driver’s license photo.

Something I find interesting, there is something within human nature that compels us to worship. We will all worship something, be it ideology, the law, or the state. That one little phrase, “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights,” defines who we answer to, where our rights come from. That was written based on Christian values and denotes Who has the actual authority. When you take the Creator and His authority out of the equation, we begin to worship the State, the law, our own ideologies that are always based on might makes right.

One thing that really makes Christianity different is that it is not based on our works, our will, our ideology, but rather His will, a God who loved us so much He died for us. That is what Christians try to reflect in our politics and in our relationships with others. Without that, there is only the law and the state, two forms of authority that are rather flimsy and fickle and based more on personal opinion and human will and power than anything else.

Our republic has survived and done well for the most part simply because people wanted to do the right thing. More and more those days are passing, and with that desire to do what is right so will our republic.

Good for you. Seeing “Allah” writing in Arabic calligraphy reminds you of Allah. And in your mind, you can translate this to “God” as an Arabic version of the “Thrice Holy” incantation, as if “Allah” in Arabic is the same as the God that Citizen Tom worships.

Is the Flying Spaghetti Monster real? Do people actually worship it? The answers to those questions are, surprisingly, yes and yes.

No, and no. It is a spoof created to make a point — that in their view, all religions are equally silly and baseless — and no “follower” treats it more seriously than that. A few jokers push this point as far as they can, even to demanding the wearing of pasta-straining colanders as religious headgear in official photos.

The attempted comparison trivializes Islam, whose billion-plus followers include millions quite devout enough to die in the service of advancing their religion. The two phenomena are not related, except through the barest of semantic games: Islam is a giant statist political system wrapped in religion, whereas the FSM is a tiny anti-religious political statement styled as a pretend-religion.

In their own way, the pastafarians are just as dangerous as radical Muslims.

Consider how you defend Christianity. When Thomas Paine was in France during the French Revolution, he found himself in a similar dilemma. The revolutionaries had chucked all past traditions, including Christianity, and adopted Reason as their god. They honored nothing outside themselves. They just called what they wanted to believe Reason. Thus, they gave themselves an excuse to act without restraint.

Too many Liberal Democrats are like the French revolutionaries of old. They want Utopia, they want it now, and they are without restraint. They honor nothing except their own desires and fears.

They stand for nothing, and so they are easily manipulated. Hence, we are losing our republic to a Socialist tyranny that promises everything, but can and will only put us in chains.

Look at the Nazis and the Communists. Neither upheld a belief in God, but both worshiped the state. By degrees, these are what such as the pastafarians are becoming. Hence, I just spoofed the pastafarians and Liberal Democrats with their own spaghetti god. Do they actually worship a spaghetti god? Of course not. Yet they do worship the state, and it is a monster they are making of it.

In their own way, the pastafarians are just as dangerous as radical Muslims.

I strongly disagree. This seems to me like saying that the child with a PopTart in the shape of a gun is as dangerous as a school attacker with an actual gun.

The FSM movement is a vanishingly small number of jokers who share no ideology other than a general antipathy to Christianity, or at least a willingness to put out this joke at Christianity’s expense. They are not organized; they are few, they have no plans to do anything other than share what they consider a cute joke and Internet meme. A few have had “fun” with it in a legal context; these are of no real consequence.

No one is willing to die for this cause. I’ve seen no indication that anyone is even willing to work up a sweat for it. A few amuse themselves with it, and that it it.

To compare this Internet joke with the threat from a 1400-year-old religio-political movement that is expanding rapidly across the world, taking over nations, and killing tens of thousands of people per year seems to be trivializing that threat. You may as well be comparing jihadism to climate change.

The Flying Spaghetti Monster people dabble in a joke. Nothing needs to be done about them. The jihadists are no joke, and failure to act appropriately risks our nation and Western civilization, while every day that we delay costs more lives.

Ah yes, Keith makes a good point in the literal sense, the lady with the colander on her head is obviously not as scary as the ones who actually want to chop off our heads, but the kind of secularism that seeks to destroy Christianity and replace it with the god of State has probably killed more people in human history than all our wars combined. I was thinking of communism and some of the other tyrannies that were all about getting rid of religion and replacing it with some form of might makes right.

The French Revolution came to my mind too, especially the Cult of Reason and the way the goddess of reason was set on a throne as a replacement for Christianity. It was called “the explicit religion of man,” and touted as the new, enlightened way of thinking…. which then lead to the Reign of Terror and the guillotine.

Christian values are surprisingly important in creating a stable civilization. One thing that’s really different and unique, the “least of these” have value, the weak are to be protected and defended, people are made in the image of God. Those ideals all speak well to the likelihood of people having human rights.

After reading your post here about Christianity vs Islam, and then reading the post I reference below, I believe I know better why King Solomon gave up trying to understand all the mysteries in life of the how and why some people make foolish decisions in their lives..

Thanks for the comment and that strange editorial from the Washington Post.

One of the presidential candidates observed something to this effect. Not all Muslims are terrorists, but all terrorists are Muslim. Exaggeration? Not really, but what does the Washington Post do? It tries to get us to feel sorry for Muslims because people are afraid of them. Yet the fear is quite rational, and I don’t see much evidence Muslims are doing anything to fix this problem.

That said I defend religious freedom. If American wants to be a Muslim, I think they are nuts, but it is their choice and their right.

When we cannot sort the terrorists from the non-terrorists, I just don’t think it makes any sense to allow immigrants from nations that have substantial numbers of terrorists. Would most of those nations have large populations of Muslims? Yes, but it is Muslims who are discriminating against other people. They are killing them.

What people believe makes a difference in how they behave, and what too many Muslims believe is not good.

Indeed they do, a joke made possible by the safety and security of living in a world that embraces Christian values, however poorly. Remove those values however, and human nature can get surprisingly ridiculous, rather quickly. The pastafarians have not yet killed anybody, but consider how many lives have now been taken simply because we have decided that human life, rather then being created in His image, is now simply a clump of meaningless cells.

I suspect Tom was more referring to the tentacles of faulty thinking, to the strands of spaghetti that lead to cause and effect.

That said I defend religious freedom. If American wants to be a Muslim, I think they are nuts, but it is their choice and their right

Show me where it says that in the bible – the bible says the exact opposite. The Constitution forbids state and federal governments from adhering to one Christian denomination but all the Founders believed and expected America to be Christian.

Anyway, you ask me where what I said is in the Bible. I did not quote scripture; however, to be justified by faith, we must choose to have faith. Choose.

Can say where the Bible or the Constitution supports your assertions? No.

Were founders stupid enough to give the Federal Government the power to decide who is a Christian? No. That power would have undone the First Amendment. Our problem is that multiple generations have failed to instruct their children in the Bible. It could easily be that you are one such child.

“I hope we once again have reminded people that man is not free unless government is limited. There’s a clear cause and effect here that is as neat and predictable as a law of physics: as government expands, liberty contracts.” Ronald Reagan.